British pensioners who cannot
afford to heat their homes. European hauliers and fishermen whose
livelihoods are under threat. Palestinians forced to fill up their
cars with olive oil. Americans asked to go down to a four-day week.
All around the world, in a multitude of ways, the soaring price of
oil is hurting rich and poor alike

The American people must rise-up
in outrage to the terrorists who rule over us and stop the planned
escalation, as a first step to de-escalating the war. It is time for
us to take our own two steps forward, to force the aggressors to take
one step back and begin to tear-down their manufactured reality

In an interesting but anticipated
move, the ruling coalition of Pakistan seems to have reached an agreement
to remove President Musharaf from power. The move was anticipated
after Asif Zardari, the leader of majority party PPP, suddenly decided
to drop his backing for President Musharaf in the wake of growing
public demand to unconditionally restore the sacked judges of the
Supreme Court, whom President Mushraf had removed

A digital lifestyle in contemporary
India may emerge as one of the most lethal hazards for enviro- health
sustainability in the near future. The millions of pieces of electronic
waste and electrical equipment ranging from personal computers, optical
disc players, mobile phones and other portable devices containing
toxic chemicals such as lead, cadmium, mercury, brominated flame retardants,
and leaching plastics are being dumped on us by the developed world

Oil was at $50 a barrel in January
2007, then $75 a barrel in August 2007. Now at $130 or so a barrel,
it is clear that oil pricing is speculative activity, having very
little to do with physical supply and demand. An essential product—petroleum—is
set by speculators operating on rumor, greed, and fear of wild predictions

Current pricing arrangements
are generating profit gushers for the large, integrated oil companies
— ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and the like. While the price of
oil is going up, these companies’ drilling expenses are not.
Oil can trade at $40 a barrel, $90 a barrel, or $130 a barrel. It
still costs ExxonMobil and the rest of Big Oil only about $20 to get
a barrel of oil out of the ground

Revolution begins by altering
consciousness. We stand at the brink of a multitude of possible futures,
many of them tragic. The failure to act and rebel when the conditions
demand it is a betrayal not only of our own humanity; it is a crime
of great magnitude. The world’s foremost thinkers and visionaries
have always understood this. Can we?

The blame cannot be shifted solely
onto the shoulders of our political leaders. The American people cannot
claim that they were “misled” by their leaders and don’t
know the truth. While they were indeed misled, the truth wasn’t
long behind the lies. Whether it its the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan,
the food crisis, the loss of our civil liberties or the sinking of
our economy, the American people have been informed and apprised of
everything. We know who the people behind the curtain are. We know
how they did the things that they did. There are no great secrets
that the American people don’t have access to. Everything is
in plain sight

Without assuming that I know
what you think, I can however share with you what I am seeing, with
the personal hope that we will all wake up to the folly which through
our collective collaboration, we are allowing our governments, banks,
corporations and the military to perpetrate

American military personnel deployed
to Iraq or Afghanistan are being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD) in rapidly increasing numbers, according to statistics
released on Tuesday by the US Army Surgeon-General

Some U.S. military personnel
appears to have launched an initiative to covert thousands of Iraqi
citizens to Christianity by distributing Bibles and other fundamentalist
Christian literature translated into Arabic to Iraqi Muslims

As we have recently eclipsed
the five year anniversary of the illegal occupation and unlawful aggression
in Iraq, there is very little discussion or attention given to the
'other' war in Afghanistan. There seems to be widespread acceptance
within the United States that our war in Afghanistan is nothing more
than a just retaliation for the horrific attacks of September 11th.
A closer look may tell us otherwise

We refuse to be quiet any longer.
We refuse to numb ourselves to corporate crime, the military-industrial
complex, the pollution of mainstream media, the theft of our ballots,
the dumbing-down, the bastardization of our arts and culture. We are
gathering and telling our stories. We are listening and painting and
shaping the wood and inserting the grace notes. Poets are collaborating
with composers and musicians. We no longer buy the tripe of “art
for art’s sake.” We do not wait for the professors to
sanction what we do. Politics is too important to be left to politicians

According to some reports, the
new Army Chief General Kayani has also asked Musharraf to leave the
Army House and wait for his fate in the Presidential House. Indications
are that the President Musharraf is leaving the Army House, but his
move into the Presidential Palace is highly uncertain. As the whole
country is gunning for his blood, the distance between the Musharraf
and his new seat of power is getting wider. It seems his career may
be extinguished soon and he may never reach the Presidential Palace

The mechanism of unholy trinity
the World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organization has succeeded in
taming the sustainable agriculture system of India by converting it
into ‘corporate backyard farm’ and ‘extended market’.
This truth is comfortably being buried underneath the propaganda of
the Uncle Sam and their scientific community. We need to put forth
our argument based on scientific facts and analysis not only to expose
the treacherous game plan of Uncle Sam but also their cronies here
in India who sincerely buttresses the propaganda

The agricultural futures trade
became a 'paper based derivatives trade' keeping prices of food items
soaring globally. And, as a part of the price manipulation, a projection
of shortage in production and supplies of wheat and other farm goods
was made. It led to a worldwide hue and cry over the looming threat
to food security. Consequently, some poor countries even witnessed
food riots and millions made to suffer severest bout of malnutrition

The pace quickens. The signs
are more numerous. We need even more than food security; we need food
sovereignty. Who controls your food? Growing at least part of one's
own food--and having something to trade--will be essential to survival

A difference in the way British
and American ships measured the temperature of the ocean during the
1940s may explain why the world appeared to undergo a period of sudden
cooling immediately after the Second World War

The biggest political issue receiving
no attention by the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates
is the powerful plutocracy that has captured the government to produce
rising economic inequality

Unfortunately, in Nepal, the
Communist leadership, mis-educated in the schools of Stalinism and
Maoism, neither has any perspective nor is ready to lead the proletariat
to take to power. It instead, seeks the power in collaboration with
bourgeois-landlords. Its failure to comprehend the true mechanics
of revolution in Nepal has resulted in missing the great opportunities
to accomplish the revolution, which had presented themselves, again
and again

The responsibility remains for
the U.S. and its allies to pay reparations for the damage and the
unimaginable suffering they have caused to the Iraqi people. Moreover,
it is not too late for George Bush, his gang and his accomplices to
be held accountable for a war of aggression, terrorism and crimes
against humanity

By GPI's criteria, scoring Venezuela
high and America lowest should be no-brainers. The US hands down is
the world's most violent nation and primary reason for Iraq, Afghanistan
and Israel's bottom rankings. The same holds for Lebanon, Somalia,
Sudan, Colombia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda, the Philippines and
a host of other nations

Many things about the nature
of China have been revealed by this catastrophe. Most people around
the world watching this heartbreaking tragedy think China is a socialist
country, run by a communist government. But in fact, since the reactionary
coup led by Deng Xiaoping after Mao Tsetung’s death in 1976,
China has been a capitalist country, dependent on and subordinate
to global imperialism. And some stark things about the exploitative
and oppressive nature of capitalist China have been revealed in the
aftermath of this devastating earthquake

The election results have upset
the old order that monopolised power in Kathmandu with the Maoists
emerging as the single largest party, representing the national mood
for change. As the vested interests, domestic and international, continue
hampering government formation, nobody should forget, including the
Maoists, that the spirit of the April revolution is still lingering
in the hearts of the Nepali people

The U.S. has the most powerful
and expensive military force in the world. The U.S. is the biggest
arms merchant. And the U.S. has been the most aggressive in world-wide
interventions. If Memorial Day in the U.S. is supposed to be about
praying for peace, the U.S. has a lot of praying (and changing) to
do

Perhaps I could’ve spend
my day in quiet contemplation of the valiant heroes who unselfishly
risk the agony of carpal tunnel syndrome as they push the buttons
and/or computer keys to launch those cruise missiles into crowded
Third World cities. The same goes for America’s many courageous
snipers and fearless bomber pilots…all of them using their fingers
and eyes to preserve our way of life. I owe my liberty to them…

On Saturday last Fascist goon
squads armed with wooden clubs carried out a “punitive expedition”,
that is, an organized raid on shops of Asian immigrants in Italy’s
capital. TV newscasts showed broken windows and glass along the sidewalks
recalling similar events in the 1938 pogroms in Nazi Germany which
came to be called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) for the shattered
store windows along city streets of Germany

In France, fishermen are blockading
oil refineries. In Britain, lorry drivers are planning a day of action.
In the US, the car maker Ford is to cut production of gas-guzzling
sports utility vehicles and airlines are jacking up ticket prices.
Global concerns about fuel prices are reaching fever pitch and the
world's leading energy monitor has issued a disturbing downward revision
of the oil industry's ability to keep pace with soaring demand

I'm traveling, yes on the road, across this country. I was going to
wait until arriving at my final destination before writing about my
experience, but with oil rapidly heading for $200 a barrel, it feels
important to do so sooner rather than later because our lives have
just changed more dramatically than we can imagine, and we will only
be able to comprehend to what extent as the repercussions of the end
of the age of oil reverberate through what is left of industrial civilization

It is past time for the rest
of the world to shoulder at least a small share of the burden of resistance.
Just as the worldwide protests before the war were among the upstream
sources of the Iraqi resistance-to-come, so now others, especially
Americans, should resist the very idea that Iraq could ever become
the headquarters for a permanent United States presence that would,
in the words of Bush speechwriter David Frum, "put America more
wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans,
or maybe even the Romans." Unlike the Iraqis, after all, the
citizens of the United States are uniquely positioned to bury this
imperial dream for all time

On October 23, 2006 a U.S. soldier
or marine peered through the telescopic sight of his M24 sniper rifle
and trained it on the face of Nora, a five-year-old Iraqi girl. Her
pretty face was close enough to kiss. Instead, he squeezed the trigger
and sent a 7.62 round slamming into her skull. The medical report
read, “Nora sustained an explosive bullet injury to her head
that smashed the skull bones and ruptured her cerebral membrane.”
Nora survived the sniper’s bullet

As a result of the Israeli government's
reluctance to order attacks which would bring massive retaliation
upon Israeli citizens, Bush has apparently realized that if he is
to eliminate the enemies of Israel in the time allotted him, then
he will have to take the bold actions required to protect the "Chosen
People" from reasonable retaliation which they bring upon themselves.
Towards this end, Bush has employed his loyal Democrat "blue
dogs" (three Zionist Jewish Democrats and two Lebanese-Christian
Republicans) to introduce legislation that is, in effect, the early
stages of a Lebanese war resolution

While the Saudis are being rewarded
for their cooperation, they must remember that prior to the 1979 Iranian
revolution, the Shah was an ally who cooperated with the United States
and Israel. His oppressive regime was given nuclear technology too.
Today, in spite of its peaceful use, the civilian technology is being
used to declare war on Iran. The Saudis who are fond of $5 million
diamond covered Mercedes while the Palestinians are being incarcerated
and starved, should be mindful their friendship will not be for long.
After all, they are sitting on top of the world’s biggest oil
reserve; and Mr. Bush is not the idiot we think he is

On Wednesday, May 21, at an extraordinary
sitting in the city of Naples the recently nominated cabinet of Italian
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi passed harsh new laws directed against
immigrants. The new decrees follow several weeks of state organised
raids and violence directed against Italy’s immigrant community

Lately we are flooded with friends.
The Great of the Earth, past and present, come here to flatter us,
to fawn on us, to grovel at our feet. "God, save me from my friends,
my enemies I can deal with myself!" says an old prayer. They
disgust me

By continuing its four-decade-old
settlement policy Israel, is, in effect, seeking to make our lives
so intolerable that we would be driven away from our land, albeit
at a slower pace than was the case during the Nakba, 60 years ago

A fact finding team that visited
Haldwani to meet a jailed journalist was turned away by muscle flexing
state administration that swears to stamp out Maoist threat from Uttarakhand
despite no evidence of its existence. Radhika Menon from Forum for
Democratic Initiatives, who was part of the team, points to a sinister
move by the state government to rob the people of the little freedom
they may have while wooing the likes of Tatas

What is striking here is not
only the hypocrisy of the Bush administration but that few commentators
have even noticed. A global chorus of outrage has been expressed with
the Myanmar junta, but a significant silence surrounds any comparison
with the failures of the Bush administration's approach in the Katrina
disaster

The height of crassness spewed
forth from the lips of none other than Naomi Klein. Basically, as
with the Dalai Lama and New Orleans, Klein's judgment for the massive
destruction and loss of life--now at 50,000 and counting--was that
it was their fault

For reasons discussed in Parts
I through V of Curtain Time, Obama's downfall will be what he claims
was a "boneheaded" mistake in entering into real estate
deal with Rezko in June 2005, less than a month after Rezko received
a $3.5 million loan from the Iraqi-born billionaire, Nadhmi Auchi,
who ended up with Riverside Park, a $2.5 billion 62-acre development
project in Chicago

Google is a gigantic information
means, bedecked with ever complex software, to what end? Information
ideally leads to knowledge, then to judgment, then to wisdom and then
to some action. As the ancient Chinese proverb succinctly put it —
“To know and not to do is not to know.” But what happens
when a company is riding an ever rising crest of digitized information
avalanches without being able to catch its breath and ask, “information
for what?”

With great admiration for her
spirit and tenacity, a fraction of which if either Al Gore or John
Kerry had he would have become President, I still refuse to support
Hillary Clinton. My reason: no senator who helped start the Iraq War
deserves to be elected

Direst forecasts have it in its
early innings with the worst of things ahead. Only in the fullness
of time will we know, but some things are clear. None of this happened
by chance. Nor should it have in the first place. A combination of
financial malpractice, outright fraud, and greed are to blame. The
same mistakes keep getting repeated. The costs keep going higher.
Sooner or later they matter, and some day it'll be too late to fix
them. Some day may be closer than smart money folks think. Stay tuned,
be cautious, and ignore Fed Chairmen and politicians promising miracles

Having read many if not most
of the books that have come out by or about former members of the
Black Panther Party for Self-Defence, We Want Freedom is one of the
best. This review cannot cover the many angles from which Mumia approaches
his experience in, the ideology, practice and legacy of the Panthers.
There are a few things that stand out are worth highlighting in this
book, more so than perhaps other books on the same subject

The blasts in Jaipur (13th May
2008), have once again brought to fore the grim reality of global
and local political scenario. In a short span of time close to hundred
innocent lives were lost. What was heartwarming was the calm with
which the society handled this grim tragedy. The amity with which
the post blast situation was handled certainly needs million respectful
salutes

“A rolling tsunami of
social unrest is underway as we speak — hungry people are desperate
people capable of taking desperate actions. This tsunami is rapidly
enveloping the global South, and it won’t take much longer before
it knocks at the door of the global North,” warned Vicente Garcia-Delgado,
the U.N. representative for CIVICUS, the world alliance for citizen
participation

The Government of India should
insitute an Independent Commission of inquiry to investigate the terror
attacks that are devouring the Indian people. The commission should
comprise personalities of an impeccable and honest track record and
we believe that we do have people with such credentials

What Noam Chomsky, referring
to the new leftist governments in Latin America, recently described
in the International Herald Tribune as a "promising sign of deliverance
from the (American corporate) demons of the past" is turning
out to be a Business As Usual policy of full speed ahead on resource
exploitation and economic growth regardless of the ecological consequences

While disasters are difficult
to prevent, they are short lived, imperialism-made disaster are deliberate,
long-lasting and must be resisted. We now know that Western humanitarianism
is a fig leaf for Western-made disasters. It is Myanmar vast natural
resources and geostrategic position that the U.S.-led Western imperialism
cares about, not the people of Myanmar

Monday's speech to the nation
By Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed was too little and too late for restoration
of democracy in Bangladesh. Though the election has been planned days
after the Victory Day celebration in mid-December, the chief adviser
deliberately avoided any commitment about the deadline to withdraw
the dreaded emergency rules

Borders and religions may marginalize
human beings but they can not cut apart relations. Despite having
an age of 104 years, time could not lessen Ishar Singh’s love
for his first family, which got separated from him during partition
of country and later embraced Islam. His daughters are settled in
Pakistan and sons in US. Presently living in Digiana with second family,
Ishar Singh remains equally concerned about his first family also

When a terrible natural disaster
strikes a country like Myanmar, millions of people are affected; many
lives hang in the balance. Humanity’s knowledge and resources
need to be brought together. People need to be mobilized to save lives,
provide medical care and deliver food. But in the world today—dominated
by the global system of capitalism—the driving interests of
profit, not the needs of the people, are put first and foremost

Back to shining examples of mainstream
truth: "We are in Iraq for honor, and to bring freedom to the
Iraqi people"...as long as enough Americans believe such fantastically
obvious lies, believe even small wettings of the daily tsunami of
propaganda from corporate media, believe federal elections are not
rigged, America is doomed. As long as people disregard evidence in
favor of what they want to believe, and are told by career liars...that
smell of rotting flesh wafting from just around the corner? It’s
the New World Order

This week, Palestinians across
the US commemorated 60 years of displacement. Yet, the lens the Palestinian
people are expected to look through under the pragmatist vision is
one that sees a dispossessed people as necessary victims for a righteous
state to take form. Unfortunately, waves of writers and commentators
continue to adopt this line in fear of retribution, in exchange for
nicer houses and comfortable livings, or a combination of both. That
is their free will. Free speech is not without consequence. Nonetheless,
losing piece of mind is the only repercussion a writer should fear

Zionist founders expected old
generation Palestinians to give up their right of return, and the
new generations to forget their historic villages and town. The exact
opposite is taking place; old generation Palestinians are telling
their history to the new generations, handing them the keys to their
old homes in order to continue the struggle

"Yes. I killed innocent
people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good
coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil
lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed
about it."

Long before the disastrous George
W. Bush administration, I had been waiting for profound, systemic
changes in our political system. Perversely, I saw the upside of Bush
as motivating more Americans to demand political change. And that
happened. But the national yearning for change was co-opted by Ron
Paul on the right and Barack Obama on the left while John Edwards
with the most authentic populist change message fizzled out early

Sen. John McCain says he opposes
the $307 billion farm bill because it would dole out wasteful subsidies,
but his chief economic adviser Phil Gramm also wants to stop its proposed
regulation of energy futures trading, a market that was famously abused
when Enron Corp. manipulated California’s electricity prices
in 2001

Colombia's belligerency, the
FARC-EP files, Fourth Fleet reactivation, continued funding of Venezuela's
opposition, CIA's covert mischief, disruptive street violence, and
other planned schemes are troublesome. They're to reassert regional
control and rid Washington of its leading hemispheric antagonist.
No guessing who, and no telling when the next attempt will come or
in what form

In Nepal, democratic renewal
has happened through a revolutionary movement that has finally empowered
those that have been marginalised and discriminated against. If questions
about the economy can be addressed, and I agree it is a very big if,
because the renewal is led by the poor and the marginalised, it is
Nepal that affords the greater possibility of a fairer, more plural
and more just society. After all not for nothing did the CPN-Maoists
wage an armed struggle

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
has seized on the recent terrorist atrocity in Jaipur, the capital
of the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan, to promote anti-Muslim
and anti-Bangladeshi prejudice and to press for a further strengthening
of the repressive powers of the state

The diversion of corn from tortillas
to biofuel was certainly one cause of skyrocketing prices, though
speculation on biofuel demand by transnational middlemen may have
played a bigger role. However, an intriguing question escaped many
observers: how on earth did Mexicans, who live in the land where corn
was domesticated, become dependent on US imports in the first place?

Israel has ruled over the indigenous
Palestinian population for 59 of its 60 years: imposing military rule
on the Palestinians who remained in Israel from 1948 to 1966 and ruling
since 1967 over the Palestinians in the occupied territories, who
now number 3.7 million. And in these 60 years, Israel has demonstrated
irrefutably that it is a disaster on every level that really matters
-- for the Palestinians; for its own citizens; and for its neighbors

Today, one of the more subtle
tools of imperialism is the use of value-laden language that seeks
to define the Arab and Muslim world. With labels such as ‘terrorists’
and ‘Islamofascism’, they wish to establish an ‘Orientalist’
perspective of otherness denoting barbarism as set apart from Israel
and the West which represents admirable qualities. It is imperative
to reject this imperial imposition of characterization and for each
state, individually and collectively, to self-rule, foremost through
self-definition

The solution to the problems
arising from the unsuccessful attempts to shut down Operation Board
Games would be for Barack Obama to become president and issue a bipartisan
pardon to all members of the “Combine” who funded his
seat in the US Senate. The scam worked when Scooter Libby took the
fall for the Bush administration. However, that might not be so easy

Thanks to the Associated Press
(AP), I recently learned about an innovative new method in psychological
therapy: killing. Thanks to the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA),
wounded American soldiers are now attempting to “recover”
from their violent trauma by, well, imposing violent trauma onto defenseless
animals

The Washington-based Cato Institute
is all about "Individual Liberty, Free Markets, and Peace,"
or so says its web site. It's been around since 1977 preaching limited
government and free market religion with plenty of high-octane corporate
funding for backing. It better have it for the award it presented
on May 15. It was to a 23 year old fifth year Venezuelan law student
at Universidad Catolica Andres Bello. Yon Goicoechea was the fourth
recipient of the "Milton Friedman Liberty Prize" in the
amount of $500,000. For what? What else. For serving the interests
of capital back home and leading anti-Chavista protests

The wind of opportunity for Israel
to get some good PR, blows from Norway in The Norwegian Lawyer's Petition
for Vanunu: Norway should grant Vanunu asylum and demand that Israel
allows him to leave the country

The proud façade of Liberia's
historical monument overlooks war-ravaged Monrovia, reading, in bold
white lettering: 'The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here.' The city around
struggles to keep a tenuous peace after decades of a civil war that
ravaged the country. The irony of the words painted on the interface
is stinging

The informed, compassionate,
and active are tasked with daunting and overwhelming challenges. It
is imperative for us to build bridges and remain connected during
these profoundly troubling times. Let us persevere, stay informed,
remain sober and realistic, and act with moral conscience on the scientific
information that is available to us. And let us keep hope alive

Cheney, Bush and their co-conspirators
throughout the three branches of government must be removed. Indicted.
Convicted. Imprisoned. Voting records of the 435 members of Congress
and 33 Senators up for re-election in 2008 must be vetted, and those
who do not reflect the will of the people must go. No exceptions.
The remaining 17 Senators must either stand or fall on their voting
records. If those who are guilty of the same breach of trust as their
cohorts refuse to budge, they must be impeached and removed from office

The garbage crisis in Naples
is but the tip of the iceberg of a global rogue phenomenon of which
we, wealthy consumers in the global village, are unwitting business
partners. We should stop ignoring this reality

This month Israel marks the 60th
anniversary of its founding. But amidst the festivities including
visits by international celebrities and politicians there is deep
unease -- Israel has skeletons in its closet that it has tried hard
to hide, and anxieties about an uncertain future which make many Israelis
question whether the state will celebrate an 80th birthday

As Israel celebrates its 60th
birthday, nothing is allowed to blemish the supposed heroism of its
founding fathers or those who fought in its name. Palestine, the Palestinians,
and an immeasurably long relationship between a people and their land
hardly merit a pause as Israeli officials and their Western counterparts
carry on with their festivities

It has been a week of adulation
from world leaders, ostentatious displays of military prowess, and
street parties. Heads of state have rubbed shoulders with celebrities
to pay homage to the Jewish state on its 60th birthday, while a million
Israelis reportedly headed off to the country's forests to enjoy the
national pastime: a barbecue

One of the most difficult things
to grasp in the modern history of Palestine and the Palestinians is
the meaning of the Nakba. Is the Nakba to be seen as a discrete event
that took place and ended in 1948, or is it something else? What are
the political stakes in reifying the Nakba as a past event, in commemorating
it annually, in bowing before its awesome symbolism? What are the
effects of making the Nakba a finite historical episode that one bemoans
but must ultimately accept as a fact of history?

If the core of the Palestinian
problem is the robbery of a people's land, plus the expulsion of its
owners, justice is not achieved by allowing the thief to keep half
of it, as the two States solution implies. Much less is justice served
by forcing the victims to share it with the thief, making them forget
the past and abandon hope of a future free from oppression

According to US Senate Intelligence Committee sources, the Bush administration
initially green-lighted the intended May 11 Israel 'demonstration
of solidarity' with the pro-Bush administration militias, some with
which Israel has maintained ties since the days of Bashir Gemayal
and Ariel Sharon.In the end, "the Bush administration got cold
feet", a Congressional source revealed. So did Israel

The failure of the Bush/Bandar/Olmert
axis to ignite a prolonged shooting war between the Lebanese resistance
forces and their hired guns Hariri and Jumblatt is a clear declaration
to the world that the glorious neocon policies of Bush have been proven
complete failures on the battlefield. Yet, he and Cheney keep pushing
for new openings to ignite a new conflagration

The reality in West Beirut today
is that even if every Hezbollah member but one withdrew, Hezbollah
would still be in control of Lebanon's capitol. He does not even need
to have a weapon. All that is necessary is for it to be known that
he is present. The Lebanese Army is increasingly deployed but its
role is determined by the Bay Rocks barricade

Reports about the latest Lebanese
conflict talked only about the symptoms of the conflict and ignored
its root causes. The Lebanese political infrastructure was deliberately
formed, since its independence in 1943, to set up the country for
perpetual political conflicts. One also needs to consider the global
and regional political dynamics to understand the Lebanese dilemma

The European idea is thus alien
to the union of Europe’s market economies. The direction of
the European Union of today is instead the final step toward its social
decadence. Neoliberlism’s triumph would be Europe’s defeat.
Today Europeans are cutting social programs as no authoritarian, right
wing Mexican government could ever do. That path would end the European
cycle. Europe would cease to be a model. Big or small, United Europe
in imitation of the USA will not work

Farmers in the Diyala province
in Iraq have been hit by just about every crisis possible. First the
security disaster dried up supplies and markets, then lack of electricity
cut irrigation, and now comes a drying up of water resources

If the Combine's plot with the
Bush administration to shut down Operation Board Games had worked,
Obama would be home free. But it failed and the Republicans are just
waiting to air the roadmap of dirt pieced together from Fitzgerald's
investigation if Obama is nominated. McCain is in the clear because
there is no sign of his involvement anywhere

When the news surfaced that Auchi
had made a loan to Rezko a month before Obama and Rezko entered into
a real estate deal to buy a mansion and lot for over $2 million in
June 2005, rumors started flying about a dinner held in Chicago at
the exclusive Four Season’s Hotel in April 2004, for Auchi and
other investors from the Middle East, attended by many top Illinois
officials and Alsammarae

After a century of this racist,
colonialist obscenity it is timely on this 60th anniversary of Zionist
Unilateral Declaration of Independence to assess what has been the
economic cost of Apartheid Israel and the human cost of Apartheid
Israel

As the U.S. and other Western
governments began celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary of colonisation
in Palestine, little attention is given to the unimaginable suffering
of the Palestinian people. Instead Israel’s daily terror against
the Palestinians has been normalised as a relief of guilt feelings

The Palestinian fighters who
were deported from the West Bank after the 2002 siege of the Church
of the Nativity in Bethlehem appealed to Palestinian leadership on
Saturday to "end their suffering and return them to their home
city of Bethlehem."

Led by Dick Cheney, Bush administration
neocons want war on Iran. So does the Israeli Lobby, but it doesn't
mean they'll get it. Powerful forces in Washington and the Pentagon
are opposed and so far have prevailed. Nonetheless, worrisome recent
events increase the possibility and must be closely watched

All of a sudden it isn't morning
in America, it's dusk on planet Earth. There's a number -- a new number
-- that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important
number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere

Over consumption and waste and
the endless economic expansion they cause are the governing principle
of capitalism and over population; and, like it or not, they fundamentally
conflict with the natural order of things. This ideology is counter
to the organizing principle of life and it has the effect of diminishing
biodiversity and the ecological processes upon which all life depends

This welcome change of pace has
come about as a result of the following very small number of words:
"Liquids production will significantly decline after a likely
bumpy plateau 2010-2020 and likely chaotic oil prices. 30 years from
now, production of easy oil will be 35% less than to day but production
of all liquids (including from coal and biomass) only 5% less than
today."

capitalism is the bane of the
Earth. It is a linear system premised on infinite growth. Corporate
media whores love to crow about “the growth of the economy”
as if the further expansion of our highly toxic, industrialized, and
consumption obsessed society on a planet that is already on life support
is a “good thing.” Let’s celebrate! We drove another
100 species to extinction, increased the toxicity of the air and water,
and eliminated 5% more of the rain forests!

Nothing seems to work right for
Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton in her attempts to once more dwell in
the White House. Senator Barack Obama, despite inflated controversies
continued his glide to the Democratic nomination with a landslide
victory and a marginal defeat in the North Carolina and Indiana primaries,
respectively

Republicans have enough damaging
information against Barack Obama to knock him off the ballot before
the November election. Those at the top of the Democratic Party know
this by now and voters need to recognize that if they nominate him
they are throwing the election. Nothing else can explain why they
would allow this disaster to happen

The data provided in the US State
Department's annual terrorism report for 2007 points to some interesting
if puzzling conclusions. The much publicised document, made available
30 April via the State Department's website, makes no secret of the
fact that Al-Qaeda is back, strong as ever. It also suggests that
violence worldwide is nowhere near subsiding, despite President Bush's
repeated assurances regarding the success of his "war on terror"

The Pentagon’s decision
to drop war-crimes charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged
“20th hijacker” in the 9/11 attacks, again underscores
the consequences of the Bush administration’s descent into torture
and other abusive treatment of “war on terror” detainees

Lebanon stands on the brink of
all-out civil war. A general strike by the leading trade union to
protest rising prices and demand an increase in the minimum wage has
led to armed conflict between the pro-Western Sunni and Druze-based
government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the Shia-based Hezbollah
and its ally, Amal

What is it about Lebanon that
creates these crises? Maybe at heart, it is the same old problem:
to be a modern state, Lebanon must abandon confessionalism –
the system which provides a Maronite for the presidency, a Sunni for
the prime minister's seat, a Shia for the speaker of parliament, and
so on. But if Lebanon abandoned confessionalism, it would no longer
be Lebanon, because sectarianism is its identity; a fate which its
children do not deserve but whose country was created by French masters
on the ruins of the Ottoman empire

The global policeman Bush, in
the time-honoured traditions of backyard bully, has long harboured
the habit of dictating to nations who their friends and enemies should
be. Now, he has taken to telling nations how much they should eat,
and of wagging a disapproving finger at poor nations whose middle
class has made some improvements in its diet

Texas-born Dahr Jamail was outraged that the
US media were swallowing the Bush administration's line on Iraq and
so, with just $2,000 and no previous journalistic experience, he set
off to find out what was really happening in the country

While I do not feel optimistic
about survival in the abyss into which we appear to be descending,
I believe that the principles inherent in the Steps can facilitate
our planting seeds that may ultimately germinate and flourish as a
new paradigm lived out by some of us and our descendents who are committed
to creating lifeboats of localized, sustainable living that serve
the entire earth community

The viral madness that is Zionism,
the most virulent form of fascism in today's world, can only be defeated
by the spiritual weapons of wisdom and compassion, wielded by people
of good will around the world, and the considerable hard work required
to cut through the fog of confusion

The Arab foreign ministers communiqué
can be understood as a call for a truce between various Arab governments:
you hold your journalists back from attacking me, I’ll hold
mine. It’s neither a call for the suppression of civil society
nor the gagging of free expression: the former is largely suppressed
and truly free expression never fully existed

True test of our democracy would
be when any deserving citizen of India, be he/she tribal, dalit, Muslim,
Christian, Parsi or Sikh can become prime minister of India. It is
true a Muslim, dalit and Sikh have risen to the office of President
and a Sikh is now Prime Minister but President's post is decorative
one, not executive one. True test lies in making a dalit or Muslim
or Christian Prime minister of India

Despite the sonorous propaganda
about international aid, more resounding still is the silence about
the Obiang family's corruption and the results of Spanish development
cooperation in Equatorial Guinea

Justice must be served to Sheikh
Hasina and Khaleda Zia along with others who are accused. If the court
ruled that they are innocents, by all means, they should be free.
If the court ruled that they are guilty, they must serve prison time
like every body else. We must see that law has been followed. We must
see that justice has been served. Only then we need to elect more
law makers to make yet more laws. If we do not need any law to execute,
we do not need any law makers either

Ismail Jalagir, a senior counsel
from Hubli (Karnataka) and Mohammad Shoaib, a senior advocate from
Lucknow (U.P.) might not have heard about each other. But even their
strongest critics would admit that they are made of the same mettle.If
there are rewards meant for lawyers who are ready to go the extra
mile to defend rigths granted to citizens under the constitution then
both these worthy citizens of the country would be the first on the
list

State terror is a reality in
Sri Lanka. That is something that the international community has
chosen to ignore. When a state is hell-bent on ‘secret’
ethnic cleansing, head-hunting human rights activists, journalists,
intellectuals, parliamentarians, vocal clerics and witnesses of state
crimes then what is the duty and responsibility of the citizens?

As the Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO) readies for a summit of world leaders next month, Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon Monday defended the Rome-based U.N. agency, which has
come under fire for its failure to help meet the growing challenges
of hunger worldwide

The rich people in the world
have to be made aware of this daily massacre that is taking place
right under our eyes, in the third-world countries and even in the
United States. It is strictly criminal. It is a question of crimes
against humanity. The awareness of having the means to act against
these crimes must make us impose radical change on our governments
against the interests of the transnational institutions. Without these
radical changes even the multinational institutions can do nothing.
It's up to us, the people, to rebel and by means of reasoned and democratic
political acts practice international solidarity

Mud cookies are all the rage
in Haiti today. The “rage” in this case, though, has been
sparked by soaring food prices. The cookies have become a staple in
poor households across the country because food is simply unaffordable.
Everyone, it seems, is dying to get their hands on the biscuits

US missile strikes on a small
building adjacent to a major hospital in Baghdad’s Sadr City
on Saturday left more than 20 people injured, destroyed ambulances
and shook the entire neighbourhood. The incident provides a glimpse
of the hellish conditions created for residents of the huge working
class slum through the month-long siege by American and Iraqi government
forces

One of our national peculiarities
is a form of discussion where all the participants, whether from the
Left or from the Right, use the clinching argument: "If we don't
do this and this, the state will cease to exist!" Can one imagine
such an argument in France, Britain or the USA? This is a symptom
of "Crusader" anxiety

Simple quantitative assessment
of the “Fritzl horror” with child abuse horrors being
perpetrated by the US, the UK, NATO and Australia in Occupied Iraq
and Occupied Afghanistan tell us that this is a very serious and obscenely
exaggerated case of “the Pot calling the Kettle black”

As I write these lines, Berlusconi’s
pfalange is occupying every nook and cranny it can get its hands on
in the country people of the world so love. First Berlusca swept the
elections to become the new Leader. Then, on the heels of his Blitzkrieg,
the Fascist heirs of the old Fascist Party—who now call themselves
post-Fascists, collected the magnificent capital city of Rome and
ancient capital of Europe

Imagine, a company lies to the
Patent Office to get a patent because if the truth were known it would
not qualify for the patent. The truth comes out. Our senators and
representatives are actually debating a new law which says its ok
for the company to keep the patent; it cannot be revoked just because
it was obtained by lying to the government. Remember if you as an
individual lie to the government, i.e., the FBI or the IRS, it’s
off to jail

After six and a half years of
imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay military prison, Al Jazeera cameraman,
Sami Al-Haj, was released on May 2, 2008 in a very bad shape. He was
carried off a US air force jet on a stretcher when he arrived in Khartoum,
Sudan, and immediately taken to hospital. Al-Hajj's case symbolizes
the policy of torture and human rights violation of the Bush Administration

Even if the man who was beaten
was death was proven-beyond a reasonable doubt-to be personally responsible
for 9/11, how can anyone but a sociopath justify such treatment? Can
anyone but a sadistic criminal justify the existence of "Gitmo"?
How much more will it take before everyday Americans collectively
hang their heads in shame over this ongoing crime and the many other
examples of their nation's contemptible conduct?

Preoccupied with the fighting
in Sadr City, it may have escaped President Bush’s notice that
millions of African-Americans live in blighted neighborhoods, some
of which, like Sadr City, also appear to have been ravaged by bloodshed
and violence

The real problem is that in addition
to having his opponent wage war on him, as is expected, he has the
Republican party out en masse campaigning for Hillary Clinton. A year
ago, I would have said, "Huh?" to such a statement, but
it proves itself more true every day

A follower of Salafi Sunnism,
bin Laden does not express absolute solidarity with all Muslims. The
assassination of two devout Muslims, Ahmad Shah Massoud and Sheikh
Abdullah Azzam, meant nothing to him. Nor does he claim to have the
support of the regime in Iran, which is Shi’ite. The religious
intensity lies in the millenarian beliefs underlying his statements;
politics play a poor second role

The realization that to impose
Hindu rashtra in this country the electoral majority is needed as
a starting point, the process of co-opting Adivasis into Hindu fold
has been stepped up. And this 8% population can be the wonderful addition
to electoral base for the right wing politics. The second advantage
is that by indoctrinating them they can be unleashed against the other
enemies of Hindu nation, like Muslims, as witnessed in Gujarat, where
they were used as ideal foot soldiers for the agenda of Hindu Rashtra

America's love affair with sports
utility vehicles (SUVs) and pick-up trucks is finally over.With petrol
now selling for almost $4 (£2) a gallon, consumers are trading
in their Humvees and Ford Explorers so fast that for the first time,
one in five cars sold in the US is now a compact or subcompact. In
another first, sales of six-cylinder vehicles were bypassed by smaller
four-cylinder, mostly Japanese, cars in April

The ripples of the March 25th
Basra offensive-turned-fiasco initiated by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki have been transformed into waves of bloodletting, crashing
rhythmically northward onto Sadr City. According to one governmental
official, more than 900 people were killed and 2600 wounded in the
teeming slum of three million in April

Mrs. Clinton is so desperate
to play the tough guy card that she’s had herself photographed
throwing shots and beers back with the boys. Now, with her nuclear
threat, she proves that she’ll say anything, do anything in
order to win what Ken Silverstein of Harper’s calls “the
frenzied bidding war to be the most ‘pro-Israel.’”
There’s no indication, as yet, that she’s ready to explain
the monstrous consequences of a war with Iran to the American people

A century old conflict between
the state of Israel and stateless Palestinians, many of whom have
been disposed from lands that created the Israel state, has precipitated
a argument: Is it preferable to have two states living side by side
or have one state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River that
includes Jews and Palestinians without prejudice and with equal rights
for all?

Given the radical undermining
of the rule of law by the government, the only way to break this vicious
circle is to invite a UN human rights monitoring mission to help with
the task of investigating both crimes by the LTTE and crimes by the
state, and bring the perpetrators to justice

I don't know, if people have
enough strength, wisdom, and intrest to build a massive grassroots
movement in order to defend their freedom, their rights, and their
lives. This would require a great deal of solidarity, time, hard work,
and coordination. What I see around is rather discouraging. But I
believe that promoting and preserving a culture of liberty and humanitarian
values within small grups of people and within families will work
as seeds for a better future. When the time is right, the seeds will
grow branches and deliver fruits

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
say they believe in giving Americans universal health care. I don’t
believe them. Anyone who takes the time to understand universal health
care should conclude that only a simple single payer system will reform
the current outrageous system that benefits the insurance and pharmaceutical
industries

The lead story in April was the
raid on the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints compound in Texas. The
story was that a woman (in this case a sixteen year old girl), called
the authorities and claimed that she was being held against her will
and was being forced to have sex with older men. The details from
that point on are a little bit confusing. The truth is that this entire
saga is, and continues to be, so confusing that the mainstream media
has seemingly dropped it

Trafficking amongst children
has turned into one of the major menaces of a developing society amongst
which Afghanistan, a war torn and socio-economically dilapidated nation,
has turned into one of the major breeding grounds of such menace after
illegal narcotics trafficking

The ongoing violence against
workers in Guatemala makes it clear that talk of free trade improving
human rights in developing countries is lost in translation. Free
trade has done nothing but exacerbate poverty and inequality, while
rewarding governments for sustaining repressive conditions that allow
corporations to exploit vulnerable, and often powerless workers

In their simple house made of
metal sheets, Myassar Abu Me'teq was sitting next to three of her
children having breakfast and holding her one-year-old baby in her
arms. She listened to their daily complaints and loving quarrels,
trying to comfort them and keep them away from the sound of the Israeli
shelling close to their home in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.
This mother did not know that their clock would soon stop ticking,
not by their creator but by their enemy

Destitution and food insecurity
among Gaza's 1.5 million residents has reached an unprecedentedly
critical level, according to unpublished UN findings that they now
need "urgent assistance" to avert a "serious food crisis"
in the occupied Palestinian territories

Relations between India and
Iran, which deteriorated over the past three years from traditional
friendship and warmth into mutual suspicion and tension, have started
looking up again. This development has significant implications for
India’s role in West Asia and Central Asia as well as ties with
its new 'strategic partner', the United States

The assault on Basra has ended
the false calm of the surge and sparked both increasing resistance
to the occupation as well as ethnic and sectarian conflict between
and among Iraq’s three great communities

The relationship between Rev.
Wright and Sen. Obama has undergone “great damage,” says
Obama, understatedly. But the break was inevitable and is no tragedy,
because it reveals the incompatibility of Obama’s adapted world
view with the body of knowledge amassed by African Americans since
before the landing of the Mayflower. The truth is always a revelation

Food riots, in dozens of countries,
in the 21st century. Is this what we envisioned during the post-World
War Two, moon-landing 20th century as humankind's glorious future?
It's not the end of the world, but you can almost see it from here

While the United States continues
to block efforts in the international arena to include native peoples
in important political and economic decision making that holds unwavering
implications for their continued existence on this planet, it is the
job of the people to stand in solidarity with the struggling indigenous
masses to assure that the power structure of government and corporate
tyranny will not finally complete their historic genocide of native
people everywhere

What a disaster in the making,
and yet, now more than ever, Vice President Dick Cheney's faction
in Washington (not to mention possible future president John McCain)
seems ready to bomb. Perhaps the Mahdi himself -- in his occult wisdom
-- is betting on a U.S. war against Asia to slouch towards Qom to
be reborn

Nirmala Deshpande, 79, a veteran
Gandhian, died in her sleep at her home in Delhi, Thursday morning.
It is natural to mourn the passing of a dear friend. Though I did
not know her personally, I mourn her passing as if she was a close
friend. We knew of her great sacrifice and struggle to keep the flame
of humanity and justice alive against powerful winds of hatred and
strife around the world, particularly in her homeland, India, the
land of Gandhi

Against the recommendations of
most economists and even the Financial Times of London, the Federal
Reserve Board yesterday cut its discount rate by yet another quarter-point,
to just 2%. Ostensibly, the intention is to try and spur economic
“recovery” – as if a cut in the interest rates would
do this

During a press conference on
Tuesday, US President George Bush spelled out the threat to Iran contained
in last week’s release of CIA intelligence on an alleged Syrian
nuclear reactor. As well as warning Syria and North Korea, which purportedly
helped construct the building, he declared that the US was “sending
a message to Iran, and the world for that matter, about just how destabilising
a nuclear proliferation would be in the Middle East”

This article summarizes an August
2007 B'Tselem report now available in print. It's one of a series
of studies it conducts on life in Occupied Palestine to reveal what
major media accounts suppress. This one is titled: "Ground to
a Halt - Denial of Palestinians' Freedom of Movement in the West Bank."

Thanks to the excellent work
of the surgeons, I am well again. That is they saved my body, but
my mind now views the sinking America and it angers me. The labor
movement has given way to outsourcing. The civil rights movement that
I was so involved in has deteriorated to the horrendous high school
drop out rate among minorities and the constant reports of black children
shooting each other in the streets

At least half-a-dozen active-duty
military officials have been working closely with a task force headed
by the far-right fundamentalist Christians planning religious events
at military installations around the country to commemorate Thursday’s
National Day of Prayer

It’s more than a little
unfortunate that Obama does not recognize this age old tactic to divide
the Black populous. Repeatedly Obama has been asked to renounce one
thing ( or person ) after another, and Obama continues to oblige…
Whittling away at the people who are truly on his side

The longer the occupations go
on, the more we will seem to be “past” the point of our
motivation’s original relevance. All the really “serious”
talk now is restricted to the narrow confines of today’s “responsibilities”
toward these countries. But how one even defines responsibility in
this case is determined by one’s worldview. It can be put in
the form of a simple question. Do we have a right to be in these countries?

Slavery is in our refrigerators.
From fruit to beef, from sugar to coffee, slave labor brings food
to our tables. “Miguel,” a Mexican slave freed by the
Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a US human-rights organization, may
have harvested the apples we eat at breakfast. Miguel picked fruit
under guard in the United States. He had traveled to el norte to earn
the money to pay for treatment for his six-year-old son who has cancer;
instead, his employer enslaved him

The first order of business for
Progressives must be to challenge this atmosphere of fear and trembling.
Those of us who dissent from our national paranoia must find the spiritual
strength to stand up and proclaim that there is nothing to fear. For
myself, I draw my strength from The Way of the Christ, and from the
Liberation Theology of Latin America. This is not for everybody, nor
should it be. But it could well be that at some future date; it may
be missionaries from Latin America who will teach us how to live a
life in harmony with creation

Is the Western consumerist culture
that we inflict upon the rest of the world truly the pinnacle of our
evolution? If it is, I resign my membership in the human race. Though
I don’t fear that I’ll be compelled to tender my resignation
any time soon because our so-called “non-negotiable American
Way of Life” is a piece of shit, for myriad reasons

Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.